Kathryn M. Barber

Kathryn M. Barber grew up in the mountains along the Tennessee/Virginia state line, near the Carter Fold. She holds an MA from Mississippi State University and an MFA from UNC Wilmington. You can find her on the mastheads for Ecotone magazine, Press Pause Press, and Southern Humanities Review, and more of her work can be found in The Masters Review, The Pinch, Moon City Review, Door is a Jar, Helen, and elsewhere. Currently, she teaches literature and creative writing at Mississippi State University. Twitter handle: @kathrynmbarber and website: kathrynmbarber.com.

ALTO by Kathryn M. Barber

October 12, 2020 · Creative Nonfiction

We’ve spent this summer in your house, the one that belongs to your father, the one that’s brimming to the top with a hundred thousand ghosts. Memories haunt this house: your parents, still together; your brother, asleep down the hall; your college girlfriend, alive, her laugh echoing across the staircase. We sleep beneath a framed photograph of that girl you loved so much, the one whose car went off that bridge we drive across every day. She’s the only thing that reminds me you’re capable of love, that it can even exist inside you. The way you grieve her is…

x-r-a-y magazine